Hump Day Report: Giving Thanks

ALOHA, ALL! It’s been a rough month. The outcome on November 6 was not just a disappointment but a kick in the gut. We’re stuck with Obama for another 4 years and there’s a stronger Democrat majority in the Senate. But we still have the House, small consolation considering all that’s been lost. And just to make this month’s misery last a little longer, Allen West conceded his race the other day. These are the times when you wish you had a rewind button – a time machine that could make it all go away. Even still, we have much to be thankful for. We are STILL the greatest country to ever inhabit the earth. We are STILL the symbol of freedom around the world. We are STILL America. So while we’ve been dealt a body blow, think of the unrest in the Middle East and the daily assaults on Israel (great article that puts what’s happening there in perspective: Middle East Burning). And remember our ideals and what makes us great.

As we reflect on our many blessings, many of us have trepidation and fear in our hearts. Are we still that “shining city on a hill”? We need perspective, and I can’t think of more appropriate comments than those made by fellow blogger Jessica, who describes herself as “Anglo-Catholic, wife, biscuit-maker and Liverpool fan – probably in that order.” Interesting that a Brit is so spot-on in her concepts of America! Jessica’s blog is All Along The Watchtower and she recently wrote this post for Nebraska Energy Observer:

It was John Winthrop, Governor of Massachusetts in the early seventeenth century who uttered the phrase used by so many politicians since:

“For we must consider that we shall be as a City upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. Soe that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world.”

President Reagan, of course, used it in his great farewell address to the Nation on 11 January 1989, when he thanked the American people for ‘the chance to serve’. How much, in that simple phrase, he caught the essence of Christian leadership – that he who is first should be the servant of all. There was no arrogance of power and office in President Reagan. He came from humble beginnings and was, in many ways the quintessence of the American Dream. He wasn’t a great intellect, he wasn’t even a professional politician, and in many ways seemed uninterested in politics at the every day level. He saw the big picture – what it meant to be ‘an American’ – ‘we stood for freedom’, he told the Nation. That America did, does, and always will. ‘We made a difference’, he told America. (Read the rest of the post HERE)

One response to “Hump Day Report: Giving Thanks”

I thank you, Gilia, and while Jess is tied up today, I’m sure she’ll be along as well. It was posts like this that made me want her, above all people to write some on my blog. She sees very clearly, I think, what America was, is, and must be into the future.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
The Declaration of Independence